Transit equity day, Sunday 2/4/24, in honor of Black History Month, Rosa Parks, and the significance of transportation history to African-American History

-- "Transit equity day, Sunday 2/4/24, in honor of Black History Month, Rosa Parks, and the significance of transportation history to African-American History," 2024
-- "Three ideas about presentation of African American History in the context of Black History Month | reprint with an addition about the US Civil Rights Trail (versus the Dixieland Trail)," 2024

February is Black History Month, and over the years I've written some pieces about the nexus of black history and urban and transportation planning. 

-- "Black History Month and the New Jim Crow," 2020
-- "Two ideas about presentation of African American History in the context of Black History Month," 2020
-- "African American History Month and Urban Planning," 2019

National Archives photo of a pretty much empty bus during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Transit Equity Day in honor of Rosa Parks.  Many transit authorities are providing free transit service on Sunday February 4th, in honor of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, spearheaded by Rosa Parks, which led to the desegregation of bus service in that city and led to changes throughout the South, through a process that sadly took many years.  

Parks' birthday is the date chosen for Transit Equity Day.

It's great that transit agencies are taking this step to link African-American and transportation history.  It's a sad story but a necessary one.

-- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, American Public Transportation Association

Interestingly, like a lot of history, Rosa Parks wasn't the first to do this, not even in Montgomery, Alabama ("Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin," NPR).  But when a concerted organizing campaign was developed, she was chosen to be the face and spearhead out front.

Sometime ago, I came across some journal articles about boycotts against streetcar segregation around the turn of the century in the South, including Richmond ("Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African-American Citizenship in the Age of Plessy v. Ferguson," book review).

DC.  Despite DC being run by the federal government, mostly under the oversight of racist Southern Congressman in the 20th Century, the city's transit system was not segregated ("Black activists' post-emancipation battle for D.C.'s city streetcars," book excerpt) as a result of post-Civil War organizing, when Congress still leaned pro-emancipation.  Hiring remained segregated ("The Fight Against Capital Transit's Jim Crow Hiring: 1941-55," Washington Area Spark).

Bus Fare Boycott, 1965/1966.  A future Mayor of DC, Marion Barry intended to get a PhD but instead  came to DC to set up a chapter on civil rights organizing for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  One of his campaigns was a bus boycott in response to a fare increase ("Marion Barry Leads Bus Boycott," WETA/PBS).  From the article:

... Barry saw the bus company’s raised rates as a direct hit to low income people in the District, who were mostly African American. On November 8, 1965, D.C. Transit appealed to the Washington Metro Area Transit Commission to increase fares from 20 cents to 25 cents a ride. 

The hearing was held in the Interstate Commerce Commercial Building (now one of the Environmental Protection Agency buildings) at 12th St. and Constitution Ave NW. The small room in which the meeting took place must have soon felt even smaller as uninvited guests showed up; SNCC crashed the party, bringing around 100 colleagues and associates. Speakers from SNCC made it clear that if the fare increase were to occur, a boycott would follow. 

Alternative transportation during the bus boycott.

... The main focus was on the Benning Road routes, which served mostly African-Americans. Organizers arranged a transportation system for boycotters: “[R]iders will be offered free volunteer car-pool and bus service to and from their jobs under an extensive plan utilizing four major car assembly points: 45 neighborhood rider substations in stores and churches; 200 volunteer cars and drivers; 20 church donated ‘freedom busses’ and more than 250 neighborhood workers” Barry explained.

... the boycott made a strong impression. Causing a loss of about $30,000 in a single day, it served as a harsh warning to D.C. Transit about the financial impacts a longer demonstration could have on the company. Officials backed down and the fare increase did not go into effect. Barry celebrated the victory, saying that the boycott showed “the people have power.  

Greyhound bus cultural interpretation "board" on the side of the Freedom Rides Museum, Montgomery, Alabama. Photo by Michael Harding

Inter-city bus segregation.  There's a terrible story of the beating of soldier Isaac Woolard returning home from military service, on an inter-city bus in 1946 for not sitting in the back, he was blinded, beaten by a police officer.  

While President Truman was no integrationist he was appalled by how this man who served his country was treated and it led him to take on more of a civil rights agenda, including desegregation of the military ("The Blinding of Isaac Woolard," American Experience, PBS).

The history of the Civil Rights Movement is intimately linked to transportation access, segregation on transit and in transit stations, Bus Boycotts no just in Montgomery, the Freedom Riders quest to desegregate inter-city bus service, violence associated with these protests, etc. 

PBS has programs on the Freedom Riders. It'd be nice to do repeat showings during Black History Month. 

A lens on transit equity.  There is the rise in the number of communities taking an equity lens to government policies and programs, including urban and transportation planning ("Baltimore transit equity study spotlights racial disparities around neighborhoods," Washington Post, "Boston’s fare-free bus pilot program sets the stage for transit equity, advocates say," WGBH/NPR).

Although for some time, transit agencies receiving federal monies were already supposed to be doing this, and they weren't.  

That's changing.  

Former DC planner-engineer and now transit official in Houston, Victoria O. Davis, authored a book, Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities. published by Island Press, on these issues.

I've written a bunch of pieces about certain elements of this over the past decade.  For example,  "Making bus service sexy and more equitable" (2012) discusses how investment in bus systems, network breadth and depth, and streetcars is a benefit for the transit dependent.  

Low income fare discounts ("WMATA to consider lower cost/free transit pass for low income riders," 2020) and incremental pass payment systems, which more transit agencies are starting to implement now too ("13 Reasons Why Transit Agencies Around the World are Choosing Fare Payments-as-a-Service (FPaaS) Platforms for Fare Collection," Masabi).

From Ride On Zero & Reduced Fare Study (Montgomery County Maryland):

... it is not uncommon for low-income users to pay single-trip fares despite the existence of a monthly pass that may provide a more cost-effective means. This can often be the result of limited financial flexibility to afford the up-front cost of the monthly pass. Under this alternative, such users may become even more disinclined to pursue the monthly pass product.

Transportation Equity Day versus Transit Equity Day.   I'd actually honor "Transportation Equity Day," if it were up to me, to address these issues more broadly.  Here are some other topics vitally important to the intertwined story of transportation history and African-American history.

The expressway was built directly on top of Claiborne Avenue in the late 1960s – ripping up the oak trees and tearing apart a street sometimes called the ‘Main Street of Black New Orleans’. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

Freeway placement divides black communities. An element is how urban freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods ("America's Highway System Is a Monument to Environmental Racism and a History of Inequity," KQED/PBS, "A Brief History Of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways," NPR, "The racist history of America's interstate highway boom," LA Times, "Could the US highways that split communities on racial lines finally fall?," Guardian).  Other urban renewal initiatives didn't help.

Urban design and minority communities.  Traditionally, minority communities face all types of disinvestment, in housing, community amenities, and in mobility infrastructure--streets, sidewalks ("Socioeconomic and racial disparities of sidewalk quality in a traditional rust belt city," SSM Population Health, 2021) including access to transit ("It's not just sidewalks and money, spatial form and density influence the propensity to walk," 2009).

Angie Schmitt writes about this in terms of pedestrian safety, Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Crisis of Pedestrian Deaths in America, also published by the great Island Press.

Transit access is more complicated even because "choice riders"--people with cars--see transit more as a social service, not a vital community service.

Another indicator is tree cover, which significantly lags ("Since When Have Trees Existed Only for Rich Americans?," New York Times).  

I have thoughts on this in "What is an inclusive city?" (2013) but I can't say it's super specific.  

When I worked on issues in DC I used to say that I wanted every block to be great, and I've made advances in thinking about planning for equity

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017
-- "Equity planning: an update," 2020
-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021

David Barth's diagram on the public realm as an interconnected system is great.  But could do better on indicating how the realm is linked through mobility networks.

My more recent writings that communities need urban design and walkable community plans ("Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning") and investment in placemaking elements

-- "Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"," 2020
-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020
-- "Why doesn't every big city in North America have its own Las Ramblas?," 2020
-- "Diversity Plaza, Queens, a pedestrian exclusive block," 2020
;--"Bus stops as neighborhood focal points and opportunities for placemaking," ) 

are most applicable to these issues.

Traffic safety and the black community. Is yet another issue ("Racial disparities in traffic fatalities much wider than previously known," Harvard).

A new study by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has found that Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately affected by traffic-related deaths—and that these disparities in fatalities are larger than previous estimates show. 

Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on Tuesday, June 7, 2022, the study found that travel distances vary among racial/ethnic groups when walking, cycling, or driving—and when these differences in activity levels are taken into account, Black Americans had the highest traffic fatality rate per mile traveled and across all modes, followed by Hispanics, Whites, and Asians. 

An out of control vehicle crashed into a gas station on Florida Avenue NE in Washington, DC, killing a patron.  Photo: Fox5DC

These disparities were particularly stark for walking and cycling, and during evening hours. The study provides a more accurate assessment of racial/ethnic disparities in traffic deaths than previous traffic mortality studies, which have not accounted for these differences in travel distances, and thus, underestimated both the traffic-related risks and deaths that Black and Hispanic Americans experience. 

These findings may also point to structural racism within the US transportation system, the researchers say.

Negro Travelers' Green Book, 1956. Digital collections, University of South Carolina. Complete scan.

Negro Motorist Green Book and public accommodations laws and enforcement.  This book was published as a guide to safe places for services, gas, eating and overnight stays for African-Americans traveling on the roads in segregated places.  

-- "Lighting the Way | When the Way is Dark," Exhibit, Smithsonian Institution

-- "Navigating the Green Book," New York Public Library

-- "An atlas of self-reliance: The Negro Motorist's Green Book (1937-1964)," National Museum of American History).

It wasn't til the mid-1950s when significant gains began to be made in laws concerning the desegregation of public accommodations beyond transit--co-equal access to restaurants, motels, stores, etc.--which led to the Green Book no longer being as necessary.

I hate to admit, given all the gas station road maps I've collected over the years, that I am just now realizing that all of the images of people, gas station attendants, etc., only feature white people.

In an interview with travel historian Gretchen Sorin, Spencer Crew recalled traveling in his parents’ car in the 1950s: “that big old car was like a cocoon,” he remembered. “We didn’t know anything except what we saw out the side windows. We could hardly see over the back of the front seat. Our parents protected us from all the racist stuff along the road." Photo titled "Mr. Lifsey presenting Oldsmobile to raffle winner, April 1955." Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

This guidebook for the National Park Service, and other organizations, in selecting sites that interpret this history.

-- Civil Rights in America: Racial Desegregation of Public Accommodations, African-American Theme Studies, National Park Service

School busing and desegregation is yet another issue.  I was just a bit too young to be conscious of bombing of buses in Pontiac, Michigan in 1971 ("On this day in 1971: KKK bombs empty Pontiac buses set to racially integrate schools," Michigan Advance).  

African American Boycott in favor of the desegregation of Boston Schools, February 26, 1964. (Photo James Fraser photograph collection, Northeastern University, Boston.)

I lived in Detroit at the time, but in 6th and 7th grade I did attend Pontiac Schools, after desegregation.  In Detroit, I attended "segregated schools.

PBS has a great documentary of the battles over "busing" focusing on Boston.  

-- "The Busing Battleground: The Decades-Long Road to School Desegregation," American Experience, PBS

-- "It was a war zone: Busing in Boston," WBUR/NPR

I really need to read Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukacs, about the battle over busing in Boston.

Bicycling as transportation and the black community.  This will come in a separate entry.